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human. momentum. man-loving. feminist. aquarian. art.

Monthly Archives: August 2016

How many of you have that friend who you’re always up to be part of their projects, proof their work, feedback after feedback, network them, but every time you call, they don’t answer or hit you back? When you need a friend to pop around, they “just can’t, there’s a lot on right now”? Or when you ask if they’ve read your blog about the topic they’re so passionate about in their work, their response is “oh babe, I love you but TLDR”? How many of you need to send a passive-aggressive social media message to that individual? Well, by all means, use this at your convenience.

Now I’m more than aware that everyone is trying to climb somewhere. We’re millennials! And in lieu of distinct talents like singing, dancing, selfie art, street art or some freaky skill bound to get you in front of a panel of B-grade celebrity judges, most of us are pawning our very lives for sense of impact upon the world around us. Gone are the days you experience something particular and blog about it, now we’re just spreading our opinion around like herpes. I’m guilty. Speaking as a stereotypical Aquarian, I am zodiacally predisposed to avoid the path-most-travelled at all costs, to divert as often as possible from what everyone else is doing to forge my own understanding, my own journey. Some of which I’ve been fortunate enough to share here with you, the readers. Wait, how did I end up doing this? Writing more about life than living it, reporting it?

When you create only for yourself, it’s the end of relevance. When you create only for your audience, it’s the end of inspiration.

I’m not going to stop, fear not. I’m too engaged in wanting to make change in this world to go off the grid. Moreover, I find myself constantly torn between struggling with the apathy of society for the written word when accompanied by a confusion about why contemporary culture is so masturbatory: trend-focused unable to sustain, self-serving and superlative. How can I be surprised at the prospect of people voting in imbeciles to positions of incredible political power, or voting to collapse the economic status of their entire country when they can’t read more than 500 words in one sitting? From what I’ve come to understand in submitting my work to online publishing, the masses can’t read more than 200 without desperately needing a picture to sustain them! Even if the picture is an advertisement- am I on glue here?

How can we expect spelling, grammar, syntax and vernacular to advance when everything has to be bite-sized and lowest-common-denominator? Art-forms and entertainment are no longer expected to elevate the masses, but to distil them, and divide them between those who ‘get it’ and those who don’t. This is why I admire creatives like Tori Amos, Augusten Burroughs, Amanda Palmer, formative Sia, Stephen Fry, Heston Blumenthal, because they’re art is intellect, designed to draw everyone into deeper or further understandings of things. You don’t have to be a genius you just have to be willing.

Anyway I’m prattling on again. So in an effort to make my point succinct here are three pretty pictures to summarise how I intend to continue backing my creative community tirelessly, and to continue backing myself, changing my perspective from what I want to achieve to how I want to create by virtue of how I live. How I Man.

Even if there wasn’t a single LGBTI+ identifying person who wanted to get married in the world, marriage should be an equal right to everybody in this country regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender identity, ability, income level. No-one should have to demand equality; this should be beyond common sense in this day and age where we have seen the most depraved prejudices play themselves out on the bodies, minds and histories of populations of people. There is not one reasonable justification to dislike, dismiss or deny equal rights for life and living to a gay person. Not a single reason whatever that you should permit the exclusion of the LGBT community from social privileges and rights.

If you’re reading this and baulking at my claim, it’s possible you are either all about that book or that bigotry – and by that book I mean the holy one that a vast majority of the religions have some outdated notion of diversity contemporary readers have used to justify countless acts of villainy and discrimination. While religion remains the backbone of many societies, and abuses that position wildly by impairing the progress of wholesome and harmonising thought or deed, then we must endure this insufferable maltreatment by zealots and the huddled ignorant. Fair call, you’re clinging to salvation and believe that involves disagreeing with people’s personal choices and private lives.

But where church/mosque/synagogue/sacred circle and state are separated, there is not a single bearing for preventing access to civil liberties that legitimately exists outside the personal pride of our elected officials, of whom many have shown incredible cowardice, which does not belong in the leadership of any nation. Electing officials does not mean relinquishing control. Being an elected official does not mean governing only the portions of society you can relate to.

So here’s where I get to the point, where if you haven’t worked out by now you’re being manipulated, then here come the chips. Every time you feel like you’re waiting too long for a doctor’s appointment, every time you abhor the quality of your child’s education, every time your tertiary education fees skyrocket, and our country lapses into an energy crisis because government haven’t invested in sustainable options, you can blame the marriage equality plebiscite. A strategic manoeuvre intended solely to drive disunity in the LGBTI+ community, to marginalise conservative and progressive alike, and to distract mass media from the outcomes of abhorrent decisions made in recent governments.

Just as Howard did with the referendum for the Republic, as continues to be done to avoid a referendum regarding the status of Indigenous Australians, the Turnbull government hopes to confuse the issue and concerned public of marriage equality to irreparable conditions and create so much civic unrest among the people that he could only be labelled a hero for the eventual calming. The hope is that the plebiscite will divide the community into some pushing against the plebiscite altogether, and some pushing for a YES vote, and some bowing out altogether because it’s too difficult. I’m in the former camp, just to be clear.

I don’t support a single policy that serves no other purpose than to separate people to the extremities of their view and discourage diversity of opinion beyond a yes-no binary (yes another damn binary). I don’t support a single policy that permits prejudice, as Brexit, Trump’s Wall, Putin’s Silencer have all done. I don’t support a policy that is rooted predominantly in dogma of any kind.

So I don’t want to hear your sympathy, I want to see it. I want to see you on the street, I want to be CCd into your emails to your local member of parliament, or forward me your tweets, send me the petition you signed, send me photos of you volunteering, or hand me your receipts for donations you made to organisations supporting equal rights for any community and I’ll chip in too. Research on this campaign is helping the government and socio-political groups to further suppress disabled communities, Indigenous Australians, immigrants, the planet. Step up now. Stop the Bigots.

I’m mad at you.
I’m mad that you’re back at that square you swore over and over you had left behind, took my love and confidence, my advice and my gambling of our friendship to tell you the harshest truth.
I’m mad that my heart breaks for your pain all the same, to see you march back to the start knowing all you know, believing the lie you tell yourself that you’re doing everything you can.

High school is over, so it’s no longer of any value to inject drama into each other’s lives. As for our own lives, contemporary society provides plenty of drama without any self-amplification. Yet when it comes to the pursuit of true love, we thrive on raw nerves and will stop at nothing short of complete decimation of spirit and stability before we relinquish our partner to rebuilding and searching again. But heartbreak is not compulsory to qualification of a meaningful connection between people.

People who hurt you can change, but not always for you. The capability for a person to hurt you, is a remark on the relationship you have, not just what one person does to another. Very few people set out to be malicious, they just do what comes naturally to them based on how they respond to you. And the longer you let them because they swear they’ll change, the harder it becomes to divert from their nature. They might be different, but you have to be different too so they’ve got some understanding of something else to reflect from.

Making it work should feel like salvation, not suffering. Further to the above, many people succeed in solving their relationship’s problems by making the effort and altering their behaviour. But if you can’t articulate what you really need, or if you’re afraid or ashamed to identify what you need because you know the other person can’t provide it? Then all you’re doing is punishing them, and yourself, and turning a healing journey into scar tissue. Fearing being alone, or unliked, and avoiding that fear by maintaining a manipulative or negative relationship is nothing but selfish.

Just because it hurts to see them go, doesn’t mean it won’t hurt if they stay or return. We don’t live in binary world. Nor do we live in one where we don’t understand the value of pain and mistake in our lives. Our willingness to compromise on certain things is bound to change, I know I have had to challenge myself on my pretty harsh views of tattoos, recreational drugs, casual sex, improper workplace conduct because they were isolating me from those around me and from my own empathy for people who had made errors in judgement as I have in other scenarios. That being said, don’t assume that the resolution to the agony of someone leaving your life is to replace them, or bring them back. We call that a Band-Aid. If you cannot find the resolution inside of you, then that’s worth the time finding and experimenting to reach. Elsewise you are bound to repeat history.

Your relationship should improve life, not consume life, and definitely not destroy it. There is a difference between growth and change. The fulfilment of your relationship, in my mind, should not equate to foregoing previous fulfilment. Is that love, or martyrdom? When you connect with someone of course the most rewarding component is the discovery of how you relate to each other, how you are magnetised. But when other relationships are impacted negatively by that rerouting of energy and commitment, it is worthwhile recalibrating ALL components to achieve balance, accept the losses, and hold fast to the one relationship imperative to survival: the one you have with yourself.

Don’t lie. Don’t lie. That’s it, don’t lie. Just don’t.

Final note. You can only give so much of yourself to the healing of others, and beyond that it is your power to forgive that matters most. If the actions of others hurts you too much to bear, then that’s on you because their choices are their own to make based on the life they were dealt, just as you want to see the outcomes of your bad choices for yourself. No-one can really tell you, you have to live it. So if you love someone so much that it hurts you to see them saunter right toward suffering? Sort your own struggle, dispense with the drama, and unless it’s going to compromise your very nature, when they need you, be there. Every time. For no other reason than love. Of them, of yourself, of life. Love alone. Love together.

B.

All images intellectual property of Marina Abramovic and Ulay. Please report any concerns to brodiejpk@yahoo.com.au